Hello.I've had some limited success with LDing in the past, but haven't tried it for a couple of years. Just trying to get back into it, and had a couple of successful RCs this morning.

Anyway, what I remember from trying before is this: You RC regularly thoughout the day, until it becomes a habit, but the trouble is everytime I RC in waking life and ask "am I dreaming?" I get the result, "no, I am awake". As this is result is repeated over and over I think my subconscious started to learn that every RC had a negative result, and this started happening in my dreams, so I'd RC and find out "no, I'm awake", only realising upon waking that it was the wrong result.

I was wondering if there's a way of tricking myself with an RC in waking life that somehow always gives a positive "this is a dream" result. Surely that way every RC will get me lucid, right? Rather than reinforce that most of the RCs happen when I'm awake.

Saying the answer, "No" all the time became a habit, and habits become dreams.

Some reality checks don't work all the time in dreams. I sometimes have normal looking hands, or can't move objects with my mind. (Those are my two big ones). But they fail me sometimes. (I already have the suspicion that I'm dreaming already before I attempt them), but I've had a few non-lucid dreams in which I did some reality checks out of habit only to see them fail with no surprise to me because that's what I expected.

But here's two others that may give a more definitive answer to, "Am I dreaming", because they don't need any logical thought. Sometimes I do a reality check in a dream thinking, "There's no way this is a dream. It's too real". But ignore what you are thinking and try these:

A) plug your nose and try to breath in through it. I have actually never done this, but it makes sense. Despite what your dream hands and dream body are doing you should still feel your lungs fill with air since breathing is not a part of muscle atonia or sleep paralysis. B) Stare at your finger about six inches from your eyes. After a while it will become askew visually or maybe even disappear altogether. Visual objects are unstable in a lucid dream.

One of the things that goes along with RCs is establishing in your mind that you can not tell the difference between waking reality and dream reality. If you could, lucid dreaming would be fairly easy. That was on eof the first things I had to learn. It was difficult because most of us have this belief that we can tell it's a dream because dreams aren't real and of course waking life is. But dreams are much more real than we think.

You will eventually do the RC during a dream and learn that you are dreaming so just keep doing it.

I remember one time when I was doing an RC and before I did thinking to myself "I'm so tired of doing these. This is so stupid doing this, I already know what the result will be, so why do it?" Then I did it and saw it was a dream. I remember just gasping, so freaked out that I woke up.

Just read about a very interesting RC that I'd never heard of. 5 or 6 times a day at least when no one is around, jump up in the air. If you are not dreaming you will just fall normally. In a dream you will float down to the ground. Have yet to try this, but will be soon.

Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? Morpheus